Many key trends look ready to coalesce in ways that should make data more easily accessible and better organized. Only that for every innovative step forward, more questions and disruption is caused as well. What’s new? Well, plenty, actually. Voice search, led by the rise of Alexa and Google Home, is ready for big-time liftoff and will have interesting ramifications for SEO – which remains something both unquantified and essential for businesses. The same goes for video, which is becoming more popular on websites but is just as susceptible to the unpredictable, shifting nature of SEO.

A world of opportunity for storytellers

For public relations professionals, this presents the usual challenge and opportunity: for those with the right message and networks for amplifying messages, the rewards are great. Deeper, better content that connects meaningfully with buyers, in particular niches, remains essential and is more important than ever. Beyond the reach of big data and reaching target audiences, developing a rapport still matters, and remains built on trust and experience. This takes a proven track record more than algorithms and mere potential. What matters is data maturity: it takes time and energy to isolate trends and optimize today’s great opportunities for message sharing and profit.

In search of truths

This need for authenticity and balance in a world more marked by chance is well represented in the rise of the digital platforms for many traditional media that now have more online that hard-copy subscriptions. The successful shift has solidified and raised the standing of classic institutions such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. Classical influencers still have their role in times threatened by fake news, and big data, which gives even larger importance to the need for veracity.

“There’s only one Colonel in Chicken Town.” This is how a narrator wraps up a new, much-talked about ad for KFC UK, in which Colonel Sanders styled like the Godfather, accompanied by the film’s famous theme, drives through tough streets teeming with fake KFCs. Instead of taking on the copycats directly, he awes them simply by fearlessly cruising through their neighborhood on his way to the real KFC. There he gets down to work, making the fried chicken that the brand is renowned for. It’s a clear message that the original master still has the most street cred.

Pirates of the Information Age

Intellectual Property (IP) and other violations regarding logos, films, songs, secret recipes and other creations can cause significant financial loss. Pirates have gone mainstream on platforms like YouTube, aided by technology that is complicit in diminishing the original work of creators. Grey areas have sprouted up everywhere online and elsewhere in regards to whom should profit from what ideas and products and to what extent, in a culture in which IP sharing has been normalized.

Amplified with intention

The KFC commercial’s message is thematically integrated into posters featuring the logos of the imitators, with similar all-caps lettering reminiscent of KFC, but instead declaring DFC, RFC, LFC, etc. KFC signs off at the bottom of the posters with “Guys, we’re flattered”, taking stock of the situation and spinning a negative into a positive with a classic comeback. Taking on any issue with the style and poise of a grand master creates a lasting impression – especially if you’re iconic enough to back it up.

Even as public relations companies attempt to find out and deliver the kind of content that consumers want, they are attempting to better their techniques that will help them do so. If this sounds like putting the cart before the horse, that’s because it is. But the alternative to not taking risks in creating content is falling behind in a highly fluid online marketing scene.

Disconnected, but forging on

While there is a significant disconnect between the perceived effectiveness of content between creators and audiences, and how effective content is having on delivering results, plans are underway to make improvements. More moving, meaningful brand experiences are desired, but the devil is in the digital details as to how this can be achieved – and tracked. A new study shows that marketers are focusing on creating content that demonstrably delivers ROI results, is efficiently managed, and makes use of more compelling visuals. Only that without better ROI results, content that can be seen as effectively managed and is visually exciting may not be either, actually, and would necessitate a return to the drawing board. A stunning 95% of content on brands is ignored by audiences, according to one estimate.

Tell me a story that I should like even more than you do

So what’s a good PR team to do? Tell a great story that inspires consumers to pay for the products and services being delivered, of course. But until the secrets of how to deliver exactly what keeps consumers entertained and paying up, by teasing useful information from big data, the disconnect between content providers and audiences will remain. It’s no wonder PR workers are seen as having jobs ranked more stressful than most, when the kinds of precise results asked for by clients are attempted to be met on channels and platforms through content that often is so hard to define.

The calculus of optimizing a company’s online potential seems simple enough: get more people coming to your website and engaging in activity there that will boost profits. Only that there are many hurdles to overcome, due to lack of prepaedness for optimizing the great potential of SEO. And the fact that the rules of the game are subject to change.

Staying atop the digital dogpile

Getting and remaining listed highly on Google’s first page of search results is getting more difficult, as companies are becoming increasingly competitive in making sure their online presence is as good as it gets, led by attractive, relevant content in synch with what big search engines are asking for. Similar challenges, competitiveness and expense limits the effectiveness of click-baiting people into visiting your website. Good SEO comes down to an effective deployment of winning content, and good use of meta tags and keyword targets. A new study of small businesses indicates that the number one SEO metric used by small businesses is traffic from the likes of Google and other major search engines, while also significant are conversions and leads, as well as use of backlinks.

SEO, s’il vous plait

The study shows that only a third of small businesses have a fully developed plan for boosting SEO, but that by the end of this year, roughly half of all companies will have such a strategy. Over six out of 10 of the small businesses surveyed say that social media marketing is the most common SEO booster. Also important to the small firms was having a website that was easy to interface with smartphones, and investing more heavily in digital marketing.

Putting the O in SEO

As if all that wasn’t challenging enough, some observers say that by the end of next year, half of all online searches may be voice-activated. This is one more area in which many small businesses need to play catch up in, if Internet searches related to their products and services are to be anything close to optimal.

Big data number crunchers have come through with an impressive snapshot of Internet life, rendered almost comprehendible by slicing and serving the online world up in one-minute slices. And it’s still a lot to digest. Digital marketers, take pause and consider what’s happening on a world gone online, and the potential for messages placed with the right audiences.

Billions and billions – messages, photos, and more screen moments

Just a few transactions shy of $100,000 spent across online shopping platforms. More than a million Tinder swipes. Googling over 3.8 million times for searches of all kinds. That’s what’s happening on the Internet every 60 seconds, on average. And that’s just for starters. The numbers are difficult to make sense of in there enormousness. Trends are towards even more Internet activity compared to last year, although there are some slower patches.

The websites we’ve welcomed into our lives

Netflix is on a tear, growing from 266,000 Netflix hours watched last year on average in a minute if you added them all up, to 694,000 this year. The number of emails sent every minute, while huge, only nudged upwards, from last year’s 187 million emails a minute to 188 million this year. Long-time video provider YouTube is experiencing slow growth as well, trickling up from 4.3 million viewers every minute last year to 4.5 million served in 2019. Meanwhile, the Great Snap Letdown of 2018 led to a decline of one-three million uses on the formerly rising application, who were displeased with a redesign that lacked mass appeal. It’s an online numbers game of great proportion, and the stakes are growing by the minute.

PR executives are listed among those who stare down death daily. Topping CareerCast’s annual chart for the most stressful careers are: enlisted military personnel, firefighter, airline pilot and police officer.

Licensed to thrill

Spots from 6 to 10 were much less marked by opportunities for encounters with bodily, but instead relied more on well-honed communications skills: broadcaster, event coordinator, news reporter, PR executive, senior corporate executive, taxi driver. The survey’s criteria for what makes jobs stressful was broken down into 11 categories, including thrills and spills like Risk of Death or Grievous Injury, Immediate Risk of Another’s Life, Hazards Encountered, and subtler obstacles too, namely Travel, Career Growth Potential, Deadlines, Working in the Public Eye, Meeting the Public, and Competition, plus the it-depends categories of Physical Demands, Environmental Conditions.

Deadlines of greater concern than risk of death

Although some jobs involve great potential risk to one’s personal safety, the greater danger day by day is that of meeting deadlines, which was the greatest cause of stress for of 38% of respondents. Moreover, almost 80% of those surveyed gave the level of stress on their job 7 out of 10 of more on a scale of 1 to 10. This is a big surge from the nearly 70% mentioned on the 2017 stress survey.

Pitfalls of being a digital publicist

In a stressful profession rife with the disruptive and potentially lucrative intrusion of digital influencers, PR execs live in uncertain times. The threats posed by fake news and distrust of media can wreak havoc. But the potential for big payoffs is profound for those who find the right balance and use big data to their advantage…

A significant chunk of big data is going unrecorded and marketing information untapped, while at the same time lifestyle preferences are pushed aside: China is less than a decade away from having a population in which a full quarter of the population will be over 60 years of age, according to demographic trends.

Sorry, there’s an app for that too

While the country continues its relentless pace of digitalization on all fronts, some seniors are balking at the perceived need to electronically attend to an increasing amount of tasks that just a few years ago were done almost exclusively in traditional ways. While day-to-day shopping and other needs have been simplified by electronic payment schemes in ways that developed countries have not implemented on so wide a scale, the catch-up is greater for elders caught on the old-school side of the digital divide. Banking, hailing taxis, booking tickets and accommodation when travelling, and ordering in restaurants are all examples of transactions now conducted easily and smoothly online for younger Chinese, and making functioning autonomously a significant challenge for seniors.

The Uninfluenced

Compounding the trend is the population’s skewing towards an ageing society, with many fewer couples opting for the economic investments required to raise a second child, even after the dramatic scaling back of the one-child policy.

And while information aplenty on all levels is being amassed on the habits and trends of younger buyers, elder Chinese stand having less known about what they are looking for, and providing information on the adaptations that might make meaningful differences in their lives, if known about.

Vivaldi has introduced a range of new services to harness opportunities for growth. The company has also invested in a new and much larger office facility. Following 12 years of consistent growth, successes across a whole spectrum of client industries and several regional award wins, the company is confident that it can accelerate its growth by responding to shifting trends in the media, marketing and PR landscapes in Thailand.